JERUSALEM (Reuters)-Israel has given preliminary approval for renovations on a contested holy site in East Jerusalem where rebuilding has triggered violence in the past, a city official said Sunday.
Municipal planners approved the project last week to repair an earthen ramp near the Mughrabi gate of the complex are connected to a revered Muslims and Jews, which both claim the region as their own Western Wall remnant of an ancient Jewish Temple.
Meir Margalit, a town the Councilor said City Hall would probably give the planned strengthening of ramp damaged by a snow storm and an earthquake in 2004 final approval this month.
"I was surprised that this problem has passed calmly," Margalit said, maintaining that Palestinians and Muslim clerics had raised no objections, but Israel had been forced to stop working in 2007, after Palestinian protests at the time.
East Jerusalem's old walled city, the ramp is located next to a composite Muslims know as Haram es-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, and al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site.
Jews Revere also spot where two biblical temples were and-which is a flashpoint in the isrælsk-Palestinian conflict.
In September 2000 a visit that triggered the protests, led to years of Palestinian uprising in which thousands died on both sides of Ariel Sharon, leader of the opposition, and isrælske.
Palestinians have claimed that renovations could be harmful from the point of isrælske Islamic relics buried underground.
Margalit said experts from Jordan, Turkey and Europe had particular "there would be no damage to the status quo and something wrong" with the renewal of work on the ramp and that experts from Jordan and Turkey to monitor the project as it progresses.
Israel took East Jersusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in one step, which has won international recognition. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a State, they aim to establish the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
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